Like most hobbies, eventually you run into things you really don't care for that some people rave about. Even more unusual, most board gamers have played all of their least favorite games when they were kids, finding out much later what board games could be. I easily could have made this a list of classic games, but I saved my vitriol for only my least favorite. This is a backwards list, so #1 will be my most disliked game of all time.
Honorable Mention: Cargo Noir
The reason Cargo Noir just missed out is because I actually like the game, I just dislike it more. I realize that doesn't make any sense, but my love/hate relationship with this game is complicated. I think it's a fun, albeit tense, game that has stellar component quality but it makes me more angry than any one game should. It has elements of bidding and worker placement, which I love, but manages to make them so stressful the game isn't worth it. It's an extremely mean game where a feud with another player will certainly lose the game for both of you and let someone else win. Good game, but I will usually pass given a choice.
#10: Hanabi
Hanabi is a small, cheap card game that has been raved about ad nauseum by reviewers online since it debuted. In this game, you hold your cards the opposite way so you cannot see your own cards and must rely on information given to you by the other players. This is an interesting concept, but it doesn't go over very well in practice. Players often give extra information than they're supposed to with little hints and reactions, which makes the game too easy. If you play the game straight-laced, it's an anti-social puzzle game that doesn't get anyone too excited. If I want a co-op game, I'll find another.
#9: Kingdom Builder
I was hyped for Kingdom Builder because it was the first game after Dominion for the designer, Donald X Vaccarino. After such a smash-hit, I was certain that this would be a solid game. I've never been so let down by a game in my life. After learning the rules and playing through it once, ending anticlimactically, I was certain that I had missed something and played the game wrong. Double checked the rules, played again, again let down. On your turn, you draw one card and have to play in the territory it represents. You have some choice about where it goes, but I felt like a lot of the game played itself, there wasn't enough choice. This game has some dedicated fans that swear that there is some depth to this game, but I just don't care enough to find it.
#8: Betrayal at House on the Hill
Before I talk about why I dislike this game, let me say what I really enjoy about it. This game works so well as a story-telling game; it's immersive and the different scenarios/haunts really offer a lot of replayability. There is certainly a place for this game in a lot of groups. I'd prefer if that group wasn't mine though. Betrayal has a traitor element, but you don't find out who it is until halfway through the game when the game comes to a screeching halt. The traitor has to read a chunk out of the rules and learn an entirely different set of rules than they had been using. Oh, and they can't ask anyone for help if they don't understand, good luck if this is the traitor's first time playing. The stories are great, but the mechanics are clunky and wildly unbalanced.
#7: Lords of Waterdeep
Ok, disclaimer: this one is kind of cheating. I don't think Lords of Waterdeep is a bad game, it's on this list because of what it could have been. The mechanics are decent enough in the base game, and made much better with the addition of the expansion, but there is ZERO theme in the game. This is coming from the D&D universe, literally an unlimited world from which to pull from and it's one of the driest games I've ever played. You are supposed to be recruiting heroes to help you complete quests, what you end up doing is grabbing some orange and purple cubes to get some black cubes. This is the definition of a pasted-on theme: you could change the theme to anything you wanted, collecting fans for a rock show, collecting rare coins for a collector, etc. Mechanics are more important to me than theme, but in this case it was a deal breaker.
#6: The Game of Life
The only reason this game isn't higher is because I do have fond memories of playing this as a child and it bumped it back a little bit. Here's something interesting that you've never thought about Life: You don't make one interesting choice for the entire game. The game is completely at the mercy of chance with no way to mitigate it, you will win or lose this game based on pure luck. In a world of fun and interesting board games, that is simply unacceptable to me. Why play a game in which you can't do anything to win or lose? It's like playing a video game and then setting down the controller while the computer determines what happens. WHY WOULD YOU PAY MONEY FOR THAT?! It's fun to watch the outcomes, but it's much more of a simulation than a game.